lol, okay, they’re fresh new pictures i took today – remembered to take pics of the black resin pieces, and yesterday i made some good progress on xeno and it’s looking more and more like an actual animal rather than a blobby thing. adding more horns probably helped with that…. it now has the start of 7 out of the 21 horns/bony projections that it will end up with. of course it’s still a bit lopsided, but it’s getting better!

so first up are the black resin pieces. first off – this black resin was super hard to work with. my mom had sent me a trial kit of the SLOW cure black resin – and it still only had a 5 minute pot life! that was part of my mold’s failing – i couldn’t get the resin in fast enough. the molds also had pour holes too small, not to mention the leaking. the horrible horrible leaking…. but the last bit of my lego order arrived today and i can start building the new molds in the next couple of weeks. i have to buy xmas gifts first, but then i’ll be able to get some more molding silicon after that (say… mid december). this of course puts me back – i had hoped to start selling dolls in january, but i think march would be more realistic. still is really soon, though!

first a couple of head shots – you can see that they’re very… rough/miscast. but very few bubbles on the surface of pierrot, who was one of the new molds.

but as you can see – the pieces were not fully cast because most of the resin leaked out the molds… which sucks, because look! the hip piece would have needed very little drilling! (the hip being one of the hardest ones to mold because of the hollow cavity)

unfortunately – the other main failure of my pieces had nothing to do with the molds, but rather the masters…. it seems mine weren’t smooth enough and the scratches showed through in the resin…. ugh…. so back to the drawing board on the final sealing of the pieces.

last bit of the black resin updates – remember this face from long ago? she was dubbed pierrot 2.0 when i was thinking of completely resculpting the pierrot head. can you see my mother’s influences? pierrot 2.0 was sculpted during those sessions where we would just sit and chat, each of us doing our own things. those were some fun times….

this cast is 100% solid because the resin was starting to cure fast (you can see by the rings across her face) and carving her out is going to take some heavy duty tools and lots of outdoors time – so she’ll be a spring time project as right now, it’s averaging about 30 degrees outside. no way i’m sitting out there dremmeling in that weather!

sadly – she would have been WAY too big for my girl body, so i’m going to probably have to either resculpt this head, or sculpt a totally new body…. sad as it is, the body may be the easier method.

and the last few pics – the updates on xenoceratops….. i’m starting to wonder if my frill is tall enough, but at the same time, i can’t make it too big as it would then make the head top heavy and hard to pose. i already know once i get it ready to be strung onto a torso i’m going to have to possibly rework things to make sure it can hold poses and not fall backwards (my main fear at this point).

i’m really trying to keep some of the wonderful hollows/shadows because i think it will add a lot of interest.

yeah, i meant to take pictures yesterday but i… was distracted….. i swear, that 80′s TMNT cartoon – once you start watching, you just can’t stop! (it probably doesn’t help that i have a rather strong fondness for michaelangelo and raphael…. )

but i digress (something i’m a pro at) – and i have pictures now! they’re not the best as i still haven’t gotten a replacement charger ^^;;;;

anyway – here is my lovely girl saru – her face is still rather lopsided (and her nose is too small/thin, eyes too low….), but i’m gradually getting her more and more to what i want. her mouth right now is probably the only thing near done, and as i get that perfected i’m realizing i need to adjust things like her nose and cheeks – which in turn affect her eyes. so with her, i’m just letting her come together as she wants.

i’ve also got the start of the torso for my large girl body – i have found that i really love the delicate fae aesthetic for my dolls, but still giving them some substance. i had to cut her torso apart early as i had managed to twist the sculpt and there was no way to correct but to cut apart (luckily the twist was right where i was going to cut anyway for the joint).

i’m trying to decide whether or not to do a lower hip joint and put her hip balls attached to the torso, but i’m not sure….

see, aren’t they beautiful lips? and yes, those are little teeth in there! in fact, they are a separate piece! i’m super happy with how they turned out.

here are pics more focused on the body – still very much in progress.

and here is my still EXTREMELY rough start on the xenoceratops inspired head. my intention was for a nice masculine head and yet… it looks rather amazing on my fae girl body…. go figure….. i mean, the ceratospid family are only built like over sized elephants or hippos….

yeah, it’s only got one horn right now because i wanted to see if i had the face shape right on that side… it sure does look silly….

here is is compared to one of the two reference pictures/drawings i’m working from – i printed it from the smithsonian blog.

and here’s the silly thing on the girl body – why does it look so right? i thought this amazing frill and horn display was a male thing!

woo-hoo! i’m back to my habit of sporadic updates and lack of pictures! ^^;;;

well, the truth is, i’ve been moving rather slow this last week with being sick – but i got a lot further on my xenoceratops head and a start on the large girl body for my ferret girl saru. i plan on doing two sets of arms – one that is a bit oversized ferret arm/paws and one as regular human arms. she’s evolved from a character doodle that has stuck with me (along with two others that i hope to someday create).

i also got in my legos and so am now saving up for molding materials. but in the meantime i think i can at least start putting some together – i *think* i might even have enough to pour one or two molds.

i also finally was able to get to files from my old computer and am in the process of getting them all moved over to this new one, but it’s going to take me a bit longer i think….

but i really hope i can get these mold working soon as a lot of my ideas use the base body with various modifications. but i think once i solve the leakage problems, everything will go smoothly (since i already solved the major air bubble problems and have decided to do seam clean up rather then seamless pieces for the sake of my dwindling sanity)

oh! and i do still plan on snagging some pictures of the black cast pieces – they’re kinda neat in an abstract sort of way – but with the winter sunlight hours, i don’t have much time to snag pictures during the week. (we seem to have sun up at around 6:30 and sundown at around 4/4:30ish – and well i normally work 7-3:30 so….. yeah…. i get to snap pictures only on my lunch break on the days i work from home….)

oh. and i lost the charger for my camera and the spare battery, and the current battery is dead so i’m using my iphone as my camera….

but gosh darn it, i’m going to keep pushing and not let it hold me back! (perhaps being sick and watching endless hours of the 80s TMNT cartoon is not the best combination when you’re wanting to be intelligent…. )

when it was made public a few days ago, i couldn’t stop thinking about the newly discovered xenoceratops. dinosaurs have always been a spot of fascination with me (they helped me learn to read, as strange as that might sound). those and prehistoric animals. all in all, i just love strange animals and have been making up a list of ones i’d love to sculpt.

i’d also love to share them with other people, and i think my making dolls off of the strange creatures (last week i learned about a type of flying lemur called a colugo, and a month or two ago i stumbled across a cute little guy called a numbat) – and maybe it’ll inspire others to go look up all the crazy and amazing things that live in this world.

after all, curiosity is contagious right?

well, after all that randomness, i started sculpting a xenoceratops inspired head for my large doll bodies. i’ll try and get pictures after it comes along a bit more (right now it’s very rough and looks nothing more than a triangular blob on a misshapen plate…. )

i had two molds fail in the actual molding phase, and i just tried to do a test pour (and had the resin start to cure on me a lot faster than expected) and i know for sure that that one mold failed, and i fear that half of the ones i test poured failed as well.

which means i just wasted 180$ worth of molding materials. it also means that i give up on the stupid cardboard method of making mold boxes and am going to pony up the 100 – 200$ for the lego bricks to make standard sized models. and another 180$ for more molding materials. oh, and another 80$ for more resin because i couldn’t open the part a for my standard resin (white) and ended up using this black resin my mom had gotten me to try out.

well, i suppose i’m trying it out now, eh?

just when i thought things were finally going my way…. so now i have to remold EVERY single piece of pierrot. as such, i plan on ordering the needed materials this weekend (along with some more paper clay) and take a mini break to focus on my big dolls so i can refocus and recoup emotionally and artistically.

i should have guessed this was going to happen, considering how my life has been going for the last 17 months. i almost expect to find out i’m going to be fired from my job or something at the end of the year….

but i got an email regarding some rather obvious (and slightly hilarious) spam comments on my blog, so i logged on to delete them….. and that’s when i saw that there were 91 comments waiting for me to decide whether or not they were spam!

well, most were easy to see that they were, but some were… well, they could have been actual comments of support, but it was hard to tell….

so if you tried to post a comment to my blog and it never showed up – please don’t take it personally! it’s time for me to admit – i am not all that compute savvy. in some aspects, it almost borders on illiterate… (i get easily confused by all the seemingly random jumbled letters and numbers) and if it weren’t for free web templets and a very patient mother who worked as a computer sys admin i would be back in the dark ages…. seriously.

but there were a few comments that asked for me to write more – write more what? i’ve never been good at writing lots… the minimum page requirements in high school and college english classes killed me – i’m not one who can b*s stuff and sometimes I’M not every sure what it is i’m trying to say.

if it’s about my process? well, sadly most of it’s trial and error and maybe once i finish my girl i’ll go and write up a thorough recollection of what all i did for her and what works and what to seriously avoid – it might be interesting…. but could also be very difficult as i still haven’t been able to get files off my old computer and that’s where all my pics and notes are….

it’s also why the main site has NOT been updated in awhile – all the source pages are kept there and i’m too stupid to figure out how to edit them without the documents on my old computer (and with my parents out of the country for a few more weeks, i can’t exactly ask them for help like i normally do….. )

lastly – getting back on topic, i am working more on the molds – i have a good set so far that is working, and i finished up the last of the sculpting on her other leg and foot, so those are ready to mold now. i’d been debating whether or not to make a second set of arm molds as i currently only have one (and i’m using the same pieces for each side) – my roommate thinks i should, and i can see why it would be a good idea, but…. i hate molding. i just HATE it. and sadly, i may be stuck doing all of the remaining bits of it on my own as there was terrible news this morning.

my roommate maybe going back to california for a bit again as her grandmother passed away this morning – it’s still too soon to know, but if she does, it means i’ll once again be in charge of all the animals and household chores (and with the seasons changing, we have a few extra yard chores too) and i may not have time to work on my girl as much as i’d like.

however, i want her to go and be with family in this tough time, as i know she was really close to her grandmother.

which leads me to another random comment – tonight we may be watching lots of spongebob and TMNT. maybe some sherlock holmes or tintin too…. something bright and cheerful…. and in the mean time, i’ll be thinking of my own grandmother who is still in hospice care, and perhaps get working on the special sculpt i want to do in her honor. after all, if it weren’t for her love of bears, i don’t think my mom would have taught me from a young age how to make teddy bears, which led to a life long fascination with toys (and in the eventual creation of this blog as i create my own).

i guess it’s time to sign off on this rambling post – until i remember to post again!

first up – a couple of shots of pierrot’s molds in progress. so far i have only one mold that i’m going to have to tweak (and that’s because i didn’t pour enough silicon in it to begin with) but i’m happy with my progress! and the unsealed parts seem to be holding up just fine – which is great because it cuts out a very time consuming step!

so here is my girl in the box, so to speak -

and i dug out my big dolls to work on in the meantime – needing a mini break from the smaller dolls as a mental refresher course. i had totally forgotten how far along i had gotten on my big boy body! i also hadn’t realized i had the start of successful jointed hands! (okay, so not nearly as jointed as what most professional companies are making, but considering they are my first attempt, i’m pleased with them)

and lastly – i haven’t figured out the scanning thing yet so i just took some pictures of pages in my idea book. currently i have 54+ ideas writtn down, but i think i only have around 30 or so drawn out…. i haven’t actually sat down and compared the lists yet….

i plan on doing a trio of skeletal birds, here are the rough sketches for an albatross (tentatively named omen) and a crow/raven – haven’t decided – (tentatively named plague)

a feathered utahraptor and my take on an axolotl inspired girl (i liked soom’s version, but not enough to get one and it made me curious to try my hand at designing a doll based on these silly little creatures)

a couple of sketches from my series inspired by japanese demons – the bone woman and the black mouthed woman

another set of japanese demon inspirations – the spider woman and i wanted to do an octopus lady, but not the obvious sense. i had a vision of a geisha with her hair held in place by delicate octopus tentacles

of course the octopus lady inspired another idea… instead of tentacles, what about little arms holding your hair in place? and then a sketch inspired by cyrano de bergerac (one of my favorite non sherlock holmes stories from when i was younger, along with don quixote and the three musketeers)

and here are a couple of older sketches – one for noir, who started out as a thought experiment in trying to incorporate a bird cage into a doll, and a sketch for a stereotypical beautiful woman – though behind this sketch is another version where i took it and used my lovely female ferret saru to create a rather sly character, and who i’m currently working on

a little tiny girl and a tentative ooak creation for my own collection – i do love strange things….

and here is the sketch i had done of voodoo, my snake girl, before i had started the head. of course the head has turned out rather differently from this sketch, but i may try and make a second snake head that looks more like this sketch. the other is the first version of a peacock inspired doll – i have since worked on developing a male peacock instead, but i may still do her, but use a different bird for the final design inspiration.

i've been drawing for as long as i could hold a pencil and art became my first language. though i've only been sculpting since 2007, i fell in love with the idea of being able to bring my drawings to life.
i am heavily inspired by medieval macabre artwork, japanese yokai, and oddly enough, sherlock holmes.
currently i'm living just south of beautiful portland oregon ^^